Saturday February 26, 2005 at 14:43
Subject: xfce
Keywords:
kde, tech, windowmanagers, xfce
Posted by: Kevin Fenzi
I have been using KDE on my laptop for quite a
while now. Overall I have been happy with it, but an annoying bug has crept in
recently that prompted me to check out the xfce desktop.
I'm not sure if the bug I was seeing was in KDE or in firefox, but if I open
a bunch of tabs or otherwise make firefox busy, KDE's window manager goes into
la-la land. I can't switch desktops or otherwise do anything until firefox is
finished loading all the tabs. This is annoying since often I want to open a bunch
of things in firefox and go read mail or do something on another desktop while it
loads.
So, I looked at alternatives:
Gnome is available of course, but the reason I never used Gnome is that unless
you like to do things the particular way that Gnome is setup to do them you are out
of luck. The Gnome folks seem to really not like anything to be configurable anymore.
So, I took a look at XFCE , which until a few days
ago was included in Fedora Core (It was one of the things pushed from Core to extras
for the next release). It sounded nice from the documentation, but I also noted that
the version in Fedora Core 3 is a older version lacking a number of good features.
Deciding that I wanted to try the newest version, I tried to install the rpms
from the xfce.org site. They didn't seem to want to install for me. I was getting
weird selinux errors and otherwise having no joy. So, I pulled the src.rpms from there
and built the packages from rpm. Those worked great. XFCE 4.2 upgraded fine from the 4.0.6
version that was installed.
Switching to using it is pretty simple, you can choose xfce from the kdm/gdm menu
or use switchdesk to change your default desktop to xfce and then you just login.
Some general impressions:
(Post Reply)
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It's Fast! The login process takes only a few seconds, and switching desktops is super fast.
The setup tools are pretty simple and easy to use. You can save your sessions,
setup backgrounds, virtual desktops, themes, all the things you expect from a desktop.
You can optionally have it load the gnome or kde background libs that gnome/kde
applications need to run. This makes the startup slower, but makes starting gnome/kde
apps much quicker later.
The problem with firefox is gone. I can load 30 tabs and switch desktops and
otherwise use other applications until firefox is done.
I was using 2 KDE tools that I had to find alternatives for: Switched
to Eterm from konsole, switched from kopete to gaim.
As you might expect, memory usage is way down. All the xfce processes take up between 50-60mb. KDE is a lot more heavy than that.
(Post Reply)
| Comment |
Author:
Matt Thompson Subject: Xfce |
Kevin, if you are getting into Xfce, might I recommend using Terminal as your, well, terminal. You can find it here:
http://www.os-cillation.com/article.php?sid=42
I highly recommend using the graphical installer. Very nice, and works better than SPRMs and the like. In fact, you should look at the Xfce 4.2 graphical installer. Much nicer than rebuilding the SRPMs (I never actually had trouble with the RPMs).
| Comment |
Author:
Kevin Fenzi Subject: xfce |
>Kevin, if you are getting into Xfce, might I recommend using Terminal as
>your, well, terminal. You can find it here: Wow...thanks for the tip. Terminal appears to do everything I want a terminal program to do. ;) It even does unicode stuff, which Eterm does not. >http://www.os-cillation.com/article.php?sid=42 I highly recommend using
>the graphical installer. Very nice, and works better than SPRMs and the
>like. In fact, you should look at the Xfce 4.2 graphical installer. Much
>nicer than rebuilding the SRPMs (I never actually had trouble with the
>RPMs). Well, I try and avoid installing anything without an RPM if I can at all avoid it. That way leads to tons of issues on upgrades. If you keep everything in the same package system then when you upgrade with that system things are much easier. For that reason I tend to avoid things like CPAN or binary installers. Terminal is great! Thanks for the tip.
>your, well, terminal. You can find it here: Wow...thanks for the tip. Terminal appears to do everything I want a terminal program to do. ;) It even does unicode stuff, which Eterm does not. >http://www.os-cillation.com/article.php?sid=42 I highly recommend using
>the graphical installer. Very nice, and works better than SPRMs and the
>like. In fact, you should look at the Xfce 4.2 graphical installer. Much
>nicer than rebuilding the SRPMs (I never actually had trouble with the
>RPMs). Well, I try and avoid installing anything without an RPM if I can at all avoid it. That way leads to tons of issues on upgrades. If you keep everything in the same package system then when you upgrade with that system things are much easier. For that reason I tend to avoid things like CPAN or binary installers. Terminal is great! Thanks for the tip.